The People Before the People
Mark you, lad, that little wee Saturn-planet hanging in the Yule tree's uppermost branches, rings and all: and can you guess for why?
Well, for the Saturnalia, of course: December 17th, this very day.
(Not that the Red Crests would have known their Saturn thus, mind you, but we do: for this is our remembering, not theirs.)
Not for that we keep the Saturnalia—though there be them in Romeburg as still do—nay, not with our Yule, the torch-lit Yule of the fathers and mothers in all its shining glory a few days hence, but for that we remember.
For are we not the Witches, and children of the Dobunni?
We are, and they—the Dobunni, them of the Two Bands—the People that were the People before the Hwicce, them as gave us our tribal name.
Aye, them we were, and them we are still.
Dobunnitas
For there in the South, among our old tribal hunting runs, we came early-by to Redcrest ways, even before the coming of the Redcrests themselves. Did not our own kings mint their own coins then, back in our days of freedom?
(And do we not mind still the Silver Lady and the Three-Tailed Stallion?)
And then when the Redcrests themselves were come, did not we ally ourselves with them against our foes, the Cats of War—the Catuvellauni, they were called—for that they had taken to themselves of our people's lands, and would have had more, were they not thus thwarted?
Yes, and did we not stand shield-to-shield with the Redcrests during Boudica's War, against those same Catuvellauni, in their standing by her? ('Victorious', they named her, but in the end, she knew defeat.)
So by little and little we came to Redcrest ways, what they called Romanitas; but never did we forget our own Dobunnitas.
No, nor have we ever forgotten.
The Witch-Year's Torch-Lit Yule
Thus and thus do we recall the Redcrests and their year's great merry-make, and all our people's long, long story.
And three nights hence, the Witch-year's torch-lit Yule.
